This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Note: This is the same as the overall BARCS report, but now only showing data for field intakes (subtype Stray)

Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2021-12-31

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Data notes: the state of the data received from the shelter.
  4. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species. It used to be divided into an Overall, Field, and OTC sections, but we found that the differences between those were fairly minor.

This table covers all strays and RTHs. Animals younger than 4 weeks are excluded from stray and RTH calculations. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays.

Strays counted here include both animals with an intake type of ‘Stray’ and those with intake type ‘Seized / Custody’ and a subtype containing Stray.

When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are lower than the national and HASS averages, which are at 30% RTH rate (for dogs) and about the same as the RTH rate for cats (3%).

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1167 22 0.02
Cat 2020 754 15 0.02
Cat 2021 621 19 0.03
Dog 2019 946 228 0.24
Dog 2020 628 171 0.27
Dog 2021 679 173 0.25
Other 2019 386 7 0.02

RTH Over Time

This time series shows the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory. There is a minor improvement from 2019 onwards, but generally a lot of ups and downs between months. These figures with only field or OTC animals also don’t display much variation from this overall one, so we kept it simple.

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.

Stray Intakes by Month

Stray Intake Subtypes

Length of Stay Differences - RTH v. Other Outcomes

The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 8 days for dogs and 14 for cats. That means that every successful RTH saves 8 days of care on average (for dogs) at BARCS.

It is noteworthy that these LOS metrics are higher by about ~2 days across the board compared to those of stray intakes coming over-the-counter (see other report).

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 2472 18.17
Cat RTO 56 4.36
Dog Other Outcomes 1681 10.39
Dog RTO 572 2.25

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Dogs

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per Census tract.

When looking at all intakes, there were initially 10512 stray animals between 2019-2021, and about 400 of them had found locations of the shelter’s addresses (Giles, Stockholm), unknown, or uninformative (found at owner address, found in yard, outside home). A furter 500 animals had to be removed because while they did have addresses, they were only a street name without a number or intersection. About 50 animals were failed to be geocoded after these filters, probably because of partial addresses uncaught earlier.

After only leaving field intakes, the following maps include a final 5306 animals, of which 2176 were dogs.

Stray Intake

Showing a total of 2176 animals. The last tab shows the top found locations in the darkest census tract - 250301.

RTH Rate

This is a little bit all over the place – partly because some areas had very few strays found in them, resulting in higher rates. The next tab will provide a more readable map.

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists. As the RTH rate is a bit messy across the city, some areas stand out here more clearly.

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations in 250301 which stands out above, to make sure they make sense to you.

Found.Location Count
5300 Frankford MD 21230 2
1002 N. Tris Ave MD 21230 1
1101 Hillen MD 21230 1
1118 Washington MD 21230 1
1227 giddings MD 21230 1
1528 N Monroe MD 21230 1
1607 Bruce Ct MD 21230 1
1636 Cole MD 21230 1
1720 E 28th st MD 21230 1
1811 Poplar MD 21230 1

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Cats

The following maps show stray intakeby Census tract to highlight geographical patterns. As RTH rate is so low for cats, there is no much sense in mapping it, so it is not included.

Stray Intake

Showing 3130 cats in total.

Top Found Locations

This time, the top 10 locations across all tracts.

Found.Location Count
1042 N Ellamont MD 21216 9
614 N Glover MD 21205 9
1906 N Wolfe St MD 21213 8
2301 Perring Manor Rd MD 21234 8
3011 White Ave MD 21214 8
3435 Leverton, 21224 MD 8
5759 Edge Park MD 21239 8
622 N Streeper St MD 21205 8
1145 W Hamburg, 21230 MD 7
1302 Pennsylvania MD 21214 7

Stray Intake – Recurring Intakes

Following our last conversation (a while ago), here is a map showing only strays that came in more than once (their Animal ID came up more than once). Including all species. This is 108 animals in total.

Map

Top Found Locations

Top 10 found locations for recurring intakes.

Found.Location Count
1622 N Hilton Street MD 21216 2
Northern pkwy and Park Heights MD 21215 2
Reistertown and Northern MD 21215 2
10 Cherryhill Rd MD 21225 1
1013 Desoto MD 21223 1
102 E Norther pkwy and Falls rd MD 21212 1
1029 Bethure 21225 MD 1
1040 N Arlington St MD 21223 1
1160 N Longwood MD 21216 1
117 S. Linwood Ave, 21224 MD 1

Average LOS by Found Location (Dogs)

Is there a difference in the time it took owners to redeem their dogs based on where they were found? This might be better answered using the outcome (owner’s) ZIP code rather than the found one, but that is what we have on file for the time being. This map only shows dogs that were strays and had an RTH outcome, and only tracts that had 3 or more RTH dogs (to remove noise from outliers).

It looks like in most cases RTH is fairly quick – there are a few excpetions where the time was much longer that stand out on the map. But these seem like fairly few cases.

Distances Traveled by Lost Dogs

This section examines animals that had an RTH outcome and both a found location and an outcome address listed to find out how far away do dogs go from home when they get lost (and are found).

Out of the 10111 strays with an address that was successfully geolocated (as appears in the previous maps) only 974 were RTH outcomes. For those, the owner’s address was geolocated as well, after removing 4 missing addresses and 12 owners that were far outside Baltimore. For each remaining animal, the distance between the two points was calculated.

After leaving only field intakes, there were 578 dogs left.

The distribution of distances is shown in the following figure.

Of the dogs, 57% were found less than a mile away from home (17% around the block and 40% more than a block but less than a mile), and an extra 27% were within 1-5 miles from home. These are similar numbers to other communities we’ve looked at (the average was about 60% up to a mile away).

Distance.Category Num.Animals Ratio
5+ Miles 89 15.4%
1-5 Miles 155 26.8%
More than a Block, Less than 1 Mile 233 40.3%
Up to a Block 101 17.5%

The median distance traveled is 0.69 miles (the average is 2.78, but it is a worse indicator because it is sensitive to a few outliers with very high distances).

We also looked at the differences between animals returned to homes in Baltimore compared to all other locations, and they indeed tend to be far further away from home – see table below.

City Count Average.Distance Median.Distance
Baltimore 456 1.40 0.58
Other 122 7.94 4.46

Microchip Analysis

The following section tried to find some key metrics around microchips:

  1. How many animals are coming in with chips, and what % they are of the total strays?
  2. What is the RTH rate differences for animals with and without a microhip?
  3. Are there certain areas from which a particularly low % of animals are coming in with a chip?

To get at those, we want to know whether a given animal had a microchip upon intake (as opposed to just having a chip number listed). For that purpose, we used the Microchip Issue Date in PetPoint as an indicator – if it was a date prior to the intake date, it was assumed the animal was chipped prior to intake.

We are not sure how robust this data is. Out of the ~10,000 stray intakes, 3700 did not have a Microchip Number at all listed. Out of those that did have one listed, 635 (about 10%) had an issue date that was earlier than the intake date. We can discuss about whether this makes sense – in the mean time, we proceed with answering questions 1 and 2. Since the percentage of chipped animals is pretty low, showing the % by area might be misleading.

How many animals come in with a microchip?

There are more dogs and coming in microchisped (13.1%) than cats (2.5%). Breaking this down by year (2019, 2020, 2021) showed no significant change in this breakdown.

Species Microchip.Before.Intake Count Percentage
Cat FALSE 3194 97.5%
Cat TRUE 81 2.5%
Dog FALSE 2018 86.9%
Dog TRUE 305 13.1%

RTH Rate with/out a microchip

This comparison is stronger after also making sure animals compared are similar on other characteristics, such as intake condition and age. But to get a first impression, for cats the RTH rate with chips is 10% compared to 2% without one, whereas for dogs, there is a 42% RTH rate for dogs with microchips vs 23% without chips.

The difference is significant (although lower than in other shelters), but it is worth also thinking about what might make the ‘yes’ category be as low as 41% as opposed to 100% (since there is presumably an owner that could be tracked), such as owners refusing, fees, wrong details on the chip, etc.

Species Microchip.Before.Intake Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat FALSE 3194 52 2%
Cat TRUE 81 12 15%
Dog FALSE 2018 460 23%
Dog TRUE 305 127 42%

Data Notes

  1. As mentioned above, around 500 animals had addresses that were not specific enough, such as a street name without a number. Even a block number would help to get a fairly accurate geolocation.

  2. On the bright side – all animals had at least some found location!

  3. Intake subtype had two values that seem to be the same: ‘Stray - under 3 months’ and ‘Under 3 months’, used for 212 and 208 animals, respectively. 7 animals had a subtype of ‘surrendered’, which might be worth removing for simplicity.

Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.